Just Visiting the Riding Mountain National Park Visitor CentreThe Visitor Centre has been here for as long as the park has existed and acts as the "nerve centre" of the park. It should be your first stop when you visit Wasagaming. There are many interesting displays, videos, a gift shop and friendly people available to answer any question you may have about Riding Mountain National Park and the surrounding area. The park website is available here. The cache is located outside of the Visitor Centre, and in accordance with Parks Canada policy there are no trade items allowed in the cache with the exception of travel bugs. This cache was placed by the Manitoba Geocaching Association to highlight geocaching in the province and welcome visitors from near and far. Membership in Manitoba's geocaching community is free so be sure to check out our website to learn all about geocaching in Manitoba. |
7/19/2008 by Kabuthunk
Ahh, my first cache of the camping trip. My wife and I have been batting around which campsite to go to on some random weekend, and eventually we decided to go to Wasagaming in Riding Mountain National Park.
Hence, we left Friday after work, and ended up arriving somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9:30pm or so. The tent ended up being set up and ready at about 10:20. Unfortunately, the only thing I wanted to do that late in the evening was to stretch my legs from having been pressed into a gas pedal for the past several hours, stretch out and relax. The last thing that was gonna happen was for those legs to either get back into the car to drive towards the coordinates, or walk the distance to get there. We were in the unserviced lots (lot 515 to be precise), so that was a fair way off from the 'town' or whatever that is. Saturday however was another story.
Come Saturday morning (9:00am or so), we slowly worked our way out of the tent and got ready for a day of adventuring (and holy crap was there a lot of adventuring on this camping trip). Heading to town, we decided to check out the various shops and see what was here. This having been my first time here ever (and Laura's second... but the first was from when she was like... 8 or so), I was quite curious as to what was all available.
A long story short, we checked out the beach for a few minutes, wandered through various shops, and eventually found ourselves at the visitor's center. Not having read the description beforehand, the cache name made a lot more sense when seeing that building . A quick walk around, and I got to sit and look at a nice fountain. Didn't have any change at all to throw though . It didn't take me long to find the cache however. Maybe 8 seconds of searching, really. As HRPlett indicates, it was indeed back in its correct spot when I arrived.
And I get the feeling that the staff there are familiar with the cache. When I was sitting down to sign the cache, one of the staff stepped out the back door looking directly at me, took about two steps, seemed to realize that I had a container in my hands, turned around, and went straight back inside again. On a random guess, I'm thinking that she was about to ask if I needed help in locating the geocache. I could be mistaken, but it seemed to be the case.
After signing the logbook and checking out the scenery in general (quite a lot of nice plantlife in the area), I closed it up again and quickly got it back into its correct spot. Hopefully it'll stay there and not drop down like such as how HRPlett found it. Then again, given how busy it was in town in general, and the fact that not a single other person was even remotely close to the back of that building the entire time I was there, I get the feeling that geocachers are the only ones who venture to that side of the building .
But yes, thanks for the quick introductory-to-Wasagaming geocache. Nothing like starting a vacation with a cache find .
Well, after sleeping of course .
And eating. Random note: farmer sausage cooked over an open flame on a stick = food of the gods. Seriously, if you haven't tried that, find a way to. Build a fire in your back yard, go to a public park with fire pits, anything. You won't regret it .
Hints (Back)
Magnetic